Monday, July 15, 2013

Killing Trayvon Martin: How White America Has Maintained Control of Its History of Racial Violence

The divides between the response of black folks to the George Zimmerman "not guilty" verdict and that of his overwhelmingly white and conservative defenders (and those who idolize him as a patron saint of white vigilantism and the way of the gun) are a function of a divergence in life experience, political attitudes, personalities, and values. What we see is often a function of where we sit.

The co-mingling of white conservatism, gun culture, and a Right-wing media which has legitimated a belief that white folks are oppressed in America by people of color, generated a worldview in which a young black man shot dead by a white vigilante is a just act.

The White Right's vantage point cannot escape the shadow of black humanity as something its sees as violent and barbarous. Racism is a mania which they have normalized as central to their cognitive map. A fish does not apologize for swimming in the water; Zimmerman's supporters de facto see black men as criminals until proven otherwise to the former's satisfaction.

I am more interested in those good and decent white folks (and others) who simply do not get what the "big deal" is about Zimmerman's murder of Trayvon Martin, and how so many people of color are hurt, upset, and enraged both by the verdict, as well as how it took a national outcry to even bring the case to trial.

I would suggest that part of the indifference and perhaps even legitimate surprise at black pain and loss in the Trayvon Martin murder case by some white people is caused by a lack of empathy for non-whites. Recent experimental research supports this claim.

Social distance is a variable as well. Most white people do not actually know, in an intimate or personal way, any African-Americans. Black people are omnipresent in the mass media. However, most white folks do not know us as full human beings. Going to see a Denzel movie, hanging a poster of Lil Wayne or Lebron James on the wall, or "following" a person of color on Twitter, is not friendship. Embracing two-dimensional caricatures of black and brown humanity does not deeply humanize people of color for those who happen to be white.

The shock and surprise by some white folks in response to black folks' anger at Zimmerman's ability to now walk free after murdering Trayvon Martin--and how he is feted by the Right for gunning down a person "armed" with Skittles and iced tea--is rooted in willful ignorance.

As the essential BBC documentary Racism: A History observes, America is beset by collective amnesia in regards to the centuries of violence by the White State and White Society towards people of color. This is no accident.

Because the victors write the history, thus generating the dominant narrative, Whiteness is able to commit "intellectual colonialism" by quite literally white washing away America's long history as a racial dictatorship, and trying to destroy the connective tissue which reaches back from slavery, to Jim and Jane Crow, and into the present.

If one does not know this history, then black folks are made to look as though they are hysterical and irrational. Such a frame is not accidental: it does the work of white racism by marginalizing black and brown people's concerns as irrelevant because our citizenship and full humanity are not to be respected by the white racial frame and a dominant culture which, as Sister Jane Elliot has pointedly described, is still sick with racism.

Sister Jane Elliot also observed how white people's number one privilege is the luxury and ability to remain ignorant of racism and the life experiences of people of color.

Will Trayvon Martin's murder and George Zimmerman's exoneration (what is a de facto endorsement of extra-judicial murder by whites against black men and boys) be a moment where those white folks who are willfully ignorant of the realities of white racism in the Age of Obama will now have their eyes opened to some plain on their face truths, or instead will they double down on a narrative of black hyper-emotionality and white innocence?

It is difficult if not impossible to have a "teachable moment" about race when the parties most in need of being educated are content to remain ignorant--or have decided they know more about the subject matter than those who are unfairly asked to educate them.

The willfully blind aren't worth the trouble. An unwillingness to identify with others bring moral and intellectual blind spots. Since they're so stupid about race, it shows up in other areas. They voted for Bush twice. They believe every dumb ass media narrative. Is it too much to ask to remember what happened ten minutes ago?

That stupidity is going to cost them in the future. They're starting to pay for it now. I'm not talking about the ones that get it. I'm talking about the "decent" people. Companies have done the math and figured that they don't need the American middle class. They have people that make things cheaper and those other countries have bigger consumer classes than the U.S. So let them carry on not getting it while the grown folks handle business.

As a White Male [and discouraged Progressive] who supports Gun Rights I find the Zimmerman verdict to an absolute disaster for the future of Gun Rights here in The Republic. It will be potent fodder for an American Left hellbent on disarming itself and everyone else.

I just came across the image below. To me it sums up the essence of Gun Rights: http://nebris.tumblr.com/post/55573005699/blackhistoryalbum-the-way-it-was-mobile

I also support reasonable access to firearms. The gun right movement is safe in America. If the murdering of dozens of little white babies in CT and in Colorado where a white madman shot up a movie theater has not moved the country to reasonable gun control policies the shooting death of a black teenager ain't gonna mean a thing. Heck, it may actually make the Gun Right emboldened. Which one of their members doesn't want to use concealed carry and SYG to bag them a negro?

So true, Chauncey. And as long as they have us divided by race and other things, they've got us by the balls. The irony is racism doesn't even benefit the middle or lower class racist long term. It just makes him all the more vulnerable to his own exploitation by the ruling class. Will they ever wake up?

History presents startling lessons to those willing to pay attention. Like the Roman Empire, the American Empire has become paralyzed by its own power, with self-satisfied and globally-illiterate masses refusing any changes at all by pointing at their nation's status in the world and claiming that "We must be doing something right, if we have this level of power!"

But the Romans' inability to create meaningful internal reform (away from the slavery that eroded the Roman middle class and away from the Raubwirtschaft that tied the Roman economy to diminishing territorial conquests) and the Romans' inability to foster good relations with a global community (foreshadowed by the Punic and Social Wars and culminating in Odoacer's Sack of Rome) led to the Roman Empire dying a death which lasted centuries.

The Romans' Optimates and their ilk who wore togas in Rome, and who carry crosses in America, will justify any poisonous line of thought by appealing to the "mos maiorum", which in the case of America is usually maudlin, faux-patriotic appeals to sanitized historical figures: "St. Ronnie conquered Communism, proving the omnipotence and rectitude of capitalism!", "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted America to be post-racial, so stop talking about racism!", "The Founding Fathers (tm) wrote the Constitution, which is the Fifth Gospel, so don't ever question it!" Ironically, the Romans were no less immune to this faux-patriotism -- Seneca's "Scipio's Villa" is a fawning, hagiographic look at Scipio, who became a symbol of a more "manly" Rome "back in the day".

All political dialogue left of the extreme right wing becomes evidence of treason.

Rome had an opportunity to reform. The Gracchi brothers had a real shot at cleansing the diseased and self-perpetuating Senate contrary to the expected self-aggrandizement expected of their class; they had a real shot at empowering the Roman middle and lower classes; they had a real shot at staunching the rise of the emperors who ended up preying on the Empire. I'm inclined to believe that when America assassinated the Kennedy brothers, we lost our one chance at reform in the same way that Rome lost its when it assassinated the Gracchi brothers.

Can America have a second chance to save itself, especially after the Commodus (the two men being actors, after all!) of the 1980's? I can only hypothesize that we need politicians who are willing to go out on a limb like the Gracchis and the Kennedys did. We need politicians who are willing to weather the blows and possibly offer up their own lives by simply saying that America isn't as good as it's presented in the brochure, and that America has a social contract with the people that it hasn't lived up to.

The only thing that might make some right wingers rethink this whole gun/stand your ground thing is for a legally armed black man to profile, attack and then shoot an unarmed white youth in a mostly black area, and (this is the important part) get an all black jury, or least one with no whites on it, and be acquitted.

Los Angeles Negroes, not only are Caribbean, South American, and continental African Negroes surpassing us in educational and economic attainment here in the USA; so to is the Negrito, aka, Asiatic Negroe, Oceanic Negroe, Melanesian.

Los Angeles Negroes, rally and protest in your streets to make North American Negroe fathers take care of their scion and to make your North American Negroe children study and work hard in your schools.

Yes of course, until a person gets straight A's and stops making babies they should shut up about being killed unjustifiably. Only the educated who have the money to raise families should be allowed to protest an injustice. Makes perfect sense.

I watched all three parts of this extraordinary program and feel like I'm a better person than I was prior to watching it. Unfortunately the false equivalency brigade is out in full force with the narrative that both blacks and whites refuse to see things from the others point of view in regards to the Zimmerman trial. The idea that the views of people who champion a murderer should be given equal weight to those who lament an injustice is absurd. But, that's just how it is in this country. The substance of black arguments aren't worth taking into consideration unless they are equally paired with white arguments like a buddy cop movie.

I am glad you enjoyed the doc. It is one the best. Ain't that something though, the justice claims of people of color don't mean a damn thing until the privileged legitimate them. Sick society huh? But working as designed for the privileged.

What kind of a person are you? You think that because people are different from you, you can stereotype them and be call for their extermination? You are a perfect example of the racist hatred this article is about. It is because of haters like you that this world is in the mess that it's in.

The problem is this takes a conscious effort. Infants tend to lock eyes with people who look most like their parents. Small children tend to identify and idolize people who physically resemble them in some way ("I like that baseball player because he has red hair like me" or even "I like that person best because we have the same mittens"), because human beings are sort-and-categorize creatures -- that's EXACTLY why the "colorblind" school of child-rearing doesn't work. If you don't tell a kid, young, that the visual categories s/he's putting together and sorting people don't have basis in proper fact, the kid is going to grow into an adult that catalogs people inappropriately.

Who is Chauncey DeVega?

I am the editor and founder of We Are Respectable Negroes, as well as the host of the podcast known as "The Chauncey DeVega Show".

I am also a race man in progress, Black pragmatist, ghetto nerd, cultural critic and essayist.

I have been a guest on the BBC, Ring of Fire Radio, Ed Schultz, Make it Plain, Joshua Holland's Alternet Radio Hour, the Thom Hartmann radio show, the Burt Cohen show, and Our Common Ground.

I have also been interviewed on the RT Network and Free Speech TV.

My writing has been featured by Salon, Alternet, The New York Daily News, and the Daily Kos.

My work has also been referenced by MSNBC, as well as online magazines and publications such as The Atlantic, Slate, The Week, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, The Daily Beast, The Washington Times, The Nation, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Judge me by my enemies. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Juan Williams, Herman Cain, Alex Jones, World Net Daily, Twitchy, the Free Republic, NewsBusters, the Media Research Council, Project 21, and Weasel Zippers have made it known that they do not like me very much.